At this moment Desirée, who also had finished her soup, sedately and in silence, rose and followed La Teuse to the kitchen. The Brother, then left alone with Abbé Mouret, cut himself some long strips of bread, which he ate while waiting for the next dish. ‘So you made a long round to-day?’ he asked the priest. But before the other could reply a noise of footsteps, exclamations, and ringing laughter, arose at the end of the passage, in the direction of the yard. A short altercation apparently took place. A flute-like voice which disturbed the Abbé rose in vexed and hurried accents, which finally died away in a burst of glee. ‘What can it be?’ said Serge, rising from his chair. But Desirée bounded in again, carrying something hidden in her gathered-up skirt. And she burst out excitedly: ‘Isn’t she queer? She wouldn’t come in at all. I caught hold of her dress; but she is awfully strong; she soon got away from me.’ ‘Whom on earth is she talking about?’ asked La Teuse, running in from the kitchen with a dish of potatoes, across which lay a piece of bacon. The girl sat down, and with the greatest caution drew from her skirt a blackbird’s nest in which three wee fledglings were slumbering. She laid it on her plate. The moment the little birds felt the light, they stretched out their feeble necks and opened their crimson beaks to ask for food. Desirée clapped her hands, enchanted, seized with strange emotion at the sight of these hitherto unknown creatures. ‘It’s that Paradou girl!’ exclaimed the Abbé suddenly, remembering everything. La Teuse had gone to the window. ‘So it is,’ she said. ‘I might have known that grasshopper’s voice---- Oh! the gipsy! Look, she’s stopped there to spy on us.’ Abbé Mouret drew near. He, too, thought that he could see Albine’s orange-coloured skirt behind a juniper bush. But Brother Archangias, in a towering passion, raised himself on tiptoe behind him, and, stretching out his fist and wagging his churlish head, thundered forth: ‘May the devil take you, you brigand’s daughter! I will drag you right round the church by your hair if ever I catch you coming and casting your evil spells here!’ A peal of laughter, fresh as the breath of night, rang out from the path, followed by light hasty footsteps and the swish of a dress rustling through the grass like an adder. Abbé Mouret, standing at the window, saw something golden glide through the pine trees like a moonbeam. The breeze, wafted in from the open country, was now laden with that penetrating perfume of verdure, that scent of wildflowers, which Albine had scattered from her bare arms, unfettered bosom, and streaming tresses at the Paradou.